When to leave home and head to BNE airport?

[flying_koala]

Hi,

I haven't flown in a long time (5+ years). We've got a flight from BNE to LAX on Tuesday. The flight departs at 10pm. If I'm not mistaken, check in opens 3hrs before that, so 7pm. We're flying economy, but I've got a qantas club membership. Not sure if there's a special check in line for that.

I'm leaving from Helensvale and I've booked a taxi ride all the way to the international airport. Normal car trip would've been about 1hr but the unknown factor is traffic. I wonder if leaving home at 5:25pm is going to give me enough (leisurely) time at the airport checkin + time at the lounge (qantas club). This is the first time I'm taking the taxi. Usually I'd catch the train, but we're travelling as a family, with 2 kids + car seat.

So I'm a bit nervous whether I should leave earlier than 5:25pm. I hardly ever go to Brisbane so not familiar with the traffic especially at this time of the day.

Should I leave at 5pm instead?

 

[Amanad78]

Brisbane traffic is horrible, I would leave at 5pm just to be safe and have a relaxed journey.
The highway in the direction you're coming will be better than going south but if there is an accident/breakdown it will slow things up.

 

[I love to travel]

Brisbane traffic is horrible, I would leave at 5pm just to be safe and have a relaxed journey.
The highway in the direction you're coming will be better than going south but if there is an accident/breakdown it will slow things up.

Have you considered the train? Removes traffic issues and no change if train and much cheaper.

 

[tdimdad]

Welcome to AFF, Flying_koala!

5:25 pm sounds very much doable. If you work backwards, to catch your flight you ought to be in the security check at the latest at 9 pm. This would put you into the check-in / bag drop by 8:30 pm. This would give you closer to three hours for the ride from GC to the airport. Any time before the 8:30 pm at the check-in will become your potential lounge time, e.g. if you'd like to spend an hour there, then 7:30 pm would be the latest good arrival time to allow adequate time through the bag drop, etc.

At the same time, I concur with the suggestion of catching the train. The arrival time to the airport is usually more certain.

 

[XWu]

A bit late reply but would go for 5pm departure if you can. Usually the northbound bottleneck is a PITA even in normal non peak traffic when close to the peak hours, but despite the expectation that southbound traffic being affected by gold coast bound flow from Brisbane CBD, that fact is there is pretty bad northbound traffic flow at Logan and Underwood exit (exit 24 and 20) even without the roadwork they have right now and that easily adds 20 mins to your journey no matter how good the driver is, particularly when getting into the gateway exit to M2/1.

Frankly 5.25pm should get you there by 7.30pm latest with check in a big question mark for economy check in (don’t think you get into business checkin queue with QF club membership) but one of you can always go up and ask the customer service agent (and if not, goto the self check in kiosk to check in and print out the bag tags, and boarding pass if you haven’t done so at home) while the other queue up for the bag drop which can be different to the manual check in queue; again the adult who goes to the front should check you are in the right queue

Recently the QF computer system had a meltdown and there was probably 80-100 pax queue for a manual check in for those who didn’t/could do an online checkin, while I watched from my Business class queue.

There is literally only 1-2 manual checkin counter for Economy and 1 only for Bus class so business class queue can get held up as well

there is a priority pass ( for security screening) issued at the manual check in counter only for plat tier or above or business class pax, but you might get a sympathetic agent giving you one for your family in tow when checking in manually

The security screen has changed (but no better or faster) in the last 5 years - standing rather than walk through but be wary of the automated electronic immigration gates which can be a hit or miss for some (and just takes one in your family with trouble with the gate to end up spending quality time at the borderforce manual counter).

Nevertheless my guess is you get to spend at least 30 mins at the lounge to recover before boarding at 40 mins from departure time. Probably a good time to organise hot chocs for the young ones for sleeping measures

 

[flying_koala]

Thanks to the suggestions to move to 5pm. We did, but the taxi didn't turn up! So lucky one of our neighbours were able to drop us off at the train station. With any luck we'll get to the airport by 7:30

 

[Flyfrequently]

Welcome to AFF @flying_koala
Let us know how you went and how much time you spent in the lounge.
Happy travels

 

[flying_koala]

We got to the airport at 7:35-ish. Took a while to check in because of the kids dual passport. There weren't many people, no long queues. After that we managed to get to the lounge by 8:30pm and had a bit of a snack until 9:15pm then headed to the gate.

 

[Seat0B]

Thanks for coming back to close the loop for us! Hope your trip was/is good.

 

[Forg]

I reckon somewhere between ages 18 & 25 ... then head south or overseas, and don’t look back.